Obama said.."Just turn off the TV -- MSNBC, blogs -- and just go talk to folks out there,.."

Is that what Obama does himself or just what he tells others to do? Were there "folks" at the National Prayer Thing or at the State Dinner that was crashed or at the NCAA game where Obama popped into the announcer's booth?

Interesting that he claims he did not get out there enough. From my POV he spent most of the year out there and no time governing and doing his job. He should not have left all the governing to Reid and Pelosi and should really have been doing what he was elected to do.

I guess he is just hoping the people won't be watching the news and finding out what he is up to. That way maybe he can sneak his program through.

Fish and house guests both stink after three days. In Obama's case he stinks after three straight days on TV giving speeches he does not believe in himself. The propagandists are hoping people just see his sincere smiling face everywhere all the time and never listen to the crap he is shoveling. Therefore no blog posts and comment are allowed. They cause analysis of the double and tripple speak he is shoveling so sincerely.

"Tea Partiers are not a fringe phenomenon...Tea Party activists can elect few people but Tea Party supporters can elect many more and winning without at least some of the Tea Party sympathetic vote is, at the present moment, a tall order."

educter,The Democrats only believe the First Amendment applies to them, and them alone.

It does not apply to the people. Rep. Jan Schakowski referred to protesters as deplorable, despicable, and disgusting.

Harry Reid threatened Disney over some stupid film depicting Clinton in a bad light.

Look at Illinois. Talk about the constitution. Durbin is trying to get the Democratic Lt. Governor Candidate to resign because of accusations that are five years old. The man was never convicted of a crime. The candidate even brought them himself out back in march. He won the election, now the Dems want him out.

I meant to say there is no constitution unless the Democrats say there is.

I think the left generally regards laws as instruments of coercion serving to make folks do what they are "supposed" to do. For that reason the laws can be adjusted to get the desired result because that is why the law exists in the first place.

Contrary to that, it seems to me that the English tradition is that laws regulate relations between equal individuals. Consequently they can't be laws of convenience because equality would be lost if the rules could be changed on a whim.

I have been wanting to say this for a while... The acorn does not fall far from the tree... one reads about his dad and the hard time his dad had in adjusting to "life"...I think BO is having just as hard a time in working through issues of real life and coming out balanced...instead he appears to have some issues that he is still "beating out" in his personal life and we all get partake in that... a marriage and family therapist would have a ton of fun with this... He learned something though...to play it cool and fool people and he might be able to get his agenda past people...trouble is, we all see it eventually...one can not hide forever.

The fourth estate has already thrown away it's reposibility to inform and investigate. They serve as a Propaganda machine for this illegitimate administration. The Blogs are the only place that correctly report that this President is a Usurper. His father was never a Citizen, and therefore Obama2 is not a Natural Born Citizen (it doesn't matter where he was born).

I haven't checked any sources or even Googled this, but Obama's statement (and his attack on Fox) seems to me to be the only case of a President calling on the citizens to simply ignore certain sources of information. It is a sort of soft prior restaint. What's next?

There's no first amendment violation in urging people to not watch the news.

There is certainly a common sense violation in urging people not to watch / listen / read or otherwise educate themselves.

But this was directed at his former Senate colleagues -- not the general public. What to take away from this?

His directive was to get out there and talk to people. Good enough.

But as recent history has shown us, Congress critters did not fare well last summer. They got scolded. A lot.

They are anxious about their jobs ... and he tells them to stop watching news (which they do to see if they are mentioned or pictured, actually) and interact with their constituents.

If they did, and did listen, he could kiss most of anything else he has on his spendgenda good-bye.

What to think? Is he being disengenuous here?

I fax letters to my Senators. One of them has NEVER EVER acknowledged recipt of my request she vote to represent my needs / wants / desires as a constituent. (I doubt I'll ever hear from her as my last warm correspondance to her office told her to start looking for a lobbying job now, as she'll be so gone in 2014. And useless before then.)

At least I used to get patronizing double talk from John Edwards.

Obama laments elsewhere that he hasn't communicated clearly. (After how many TV appearances, interviews, and 165+ trips on Air Force 1?)

Oh, ok guys. And what if he cautioned you against watching al Jazeera? Would that also be a way to put the kibosh on your 1st amendment rights? You know, a lot of people consider al Jazeera a great source for unbiased news and opinion on what's happening in the Middle East. And yet, others might consider it biased for not being sympathetic to an American perspective - despite how useful it might be to American interests to get an unbiased take on how what we do goes over around the world...

And your "hearts & minds" are too small to be won over. I've long since given up on the idea that most people here will listen to either reason or a heartfelt appeal to anything that Sarah Palin and her staff haven't approved beforehand. There are a few exceptions here and there, but you're not one of them and neither are the majority of those that sit in this here peanut gallery.

It depends on whether you're able to tell the difference between defining something and blurring something, BJM.

As I said, 5 of you to take on one of me!

Other than that, what Henry said.

P.S. Maguro, although I don't lump you in with the crude, witless gnats who swarm about - or a talking gecko on a TV commercial for that matter - I only use the term you mentioned as a way of pointing out that certain social and intellectual functions are useful, even if forbidden to lower vertebrates - or the political factions which would try to emulate them.

Given Mr Obama's declining approval numbers, I rather doubt blogs have anything to do with it.

Now I happen to like blogs because they give me a chance to read opposing opinions--thats a good thing, IMO. I think ultimately we are better off because of them than not. I do tend to be a JS Mill liberal in terms of free speech. But thats an whole other issue.

Imagine if he had said to Thomas Paine's readers "just turn off the ... presses". That is what he's asking for, for the same reason King George III would have if he could have. To quiesce the rabble. Ain't happenin' here now either.

My flight out of town for the weekend leaves around 2. Suffice it to say, I will not be stopped at the gate with prescription bottles filled with little blue pills and marked under the prescriber's name, as L-i-m-b-a-u-g-h was.

Then, at 10:28 on the same day, I posted this comment:

Anyway, I'll return to look at the response late Sunday. Have a good weekend, everyone!

I returned from out of town Monday afternoon, 2 days later, and found a comment posted on my blog by Trooper York, informing me of this nasty little post uploaded by Althouse at 10:53 AM.

If you open up the link, you'll notice that I responded to it, 2 days later, after I read the post that Trooper informed me of.

But because some tubthumping bullshitter by the name of "FEN" said so, I'm supposed to believe that I hadn't left out of town for two days (because I never leave town just to have fun, but only because I happened to predict that Althouse was going to decide to slime me), Althouse hadn't decided to take advantage of a congenial announcement I had made to that effect, and that my decision to post on the very same thread as to whether or not I was allowed to defend myself was just part of an elaborate scheme.

Now, I don't know about you, but perhaps FEN is never away from his keyboard. Perhaps he doesn't get to enjoy days off from work, traveling, or any of the other amenities that a good number of folks get to enjoy. Maybe he doesn't trust that someone wouldn't be so insecure as to have to wait for his absence to say anything critical about him. But I did and I daresay a whole lot of people who aren't so tightly coiled into a twisted shell of resentment might actually, you know, be able to relate to that.

Of course, the alternative is that I knew in advance Althouse was going to unfairly post something about me, and decided to play along in part of an elaborately concocted hoax, informing everyone here of a weekend vacation that I actually wasn't going on, just so that I could play along with it - and then somehow decided, 2 days later, that I would respond anyway. But only someone as stupid and insecure as FEN would believe something like that.

Or maybe he believes in time travel. Maybe I posted those comments about my impending travel plans after the fact, just to give Althouse the cover she needed.

FEN either can't read, or believes that I wouldn't respond to a thread about me immediately after it is posted, but would two days later. I think that says something about FEN's inability to stick up for himself. It says nothing about me.

Whatever. FEN tries his hand at Sherlock Holmes analysis but unfortunately lacks the detective's mind, and instead has the brainpower of something between a jellyfish and a nematode.

As for the fall-out of Obama's presence at the Rept's Maryland retreat, the comments I linked to say it all. And if that doesn't say enough for some, the fact that FOX broke away from continuing to cover it live should say the rest.

Thanks as always for the wise words and for defending against group-think pile-on. I just can't understand why someone would deny (as Fen has consistently done) that I might ever decide to take a break, leave out of town, go on vacation, whatnot. Why does he keep hammering on with this goofy theory that I made up the fact that I was out of town? God forbid that I would actually not prioritize reading the Althouse blog for a day or two!!!

And besides, how could one thoroughly enjoy a vacation in Brazil without obsessively feeling a constant need to check in on fish-eye lens photos of a plate of pancakes in a rustic cafe in Madison, WI?

So in other words, you have no evidence for anything you say. Which leaves you with the integrity of... a lunatic.

I've vacationed before... and left direction of my blog to Trooper. How often do you suppose I go on vacations, Fen?

What is wrong with you? Would you like to know who I met with? Would you like plane ticket receipts? Are you curious what I did or where I went? It was a nice trip, and I have fond memories from it. Would you care to know about them? Would you like to know what I'm doing this coming weekend, and with whom? And what we're doing? Would you like to ask them if the weekend in question existed?

You are an idiot, with a pretty small existence to think I would make all this up simply to cover up for a silly blog post. Do you honestly think that all I have to do in life is to wait around and see what is posted on this blog?

You are reflecting your own smallness, Fen. It's not pretty. Your life must be pretty pathetic to assume all the things you're assuming. You're right that you're getting under my skin, but will only continue to do so until I am forced to come to the sad conclusion that your own life really is as empty as you must imagine mine to be.

And you're really getting there.

Why don't you tell me what your own plans for this weekend consist of, Fen? Do you have any? I mean, you say a lot of stupid things, and I don't blame them on what must apparently be your own lack of a life.

Any presidential history buffs know whether this is the first president to be abandoned by both parents and whose parents both fled the United States? This whole watching Obama work out his childhood abandonment issues through the office of the president of the United States is pretty cool. Maybe he'll do a reality show afterwards? I mean, since President of the World is not yet an available title and he's going to have quite a few years left on his odometer when he finally gets booted out the door.

I think it may be time to turn off Ritmo.. nice way to hijack the thread about Obama "champ".

And what is it with all this self congratulating, chestthumping, "I can wipe you all out" tone ?

You are a liberal partisan hack,Ritmo.I have viewed comments of other lefties on this site and even though i may disagree with them, they are able to put forth their views without being unnecessarily pompous and trash talking their way like you do.

You think that you cannot possibly win the hearts and minds of people who have a different perspective of life and politics just because you have convinced yourself that only you are right and your opponents are misguided at best and evil at worst.

This is the exact attitude that produced Lenin,Stalin,Mao and extracted the lives of millions of innocent victims.

Jonah Goldberg was on to something when he talked about liberal fascists. Liberals like Ritmo find it hard to even see that there are genuine differences in ideas, political thought and immediately attribute ill will to their opponents.

Just turn off the blogs, congressscritters- and listen to Obama. now that should do wonders.

For that matter does anyone still think that Mr. Obama himself can be literate when he uses phrases like "*turn off*...the blogs" as though blogs were broadcast shows instead of written journals? :P

No, no! Mr. Obama is clearly looking out for the best interests of his little fluffyheaded supporters when he tells them to stay away from reading and from current events since quite clearly they are incapable of dealing with anything more advanced than "Barney the Dinosaur". Excusing them from adult pastimes as he has just done will doubtless serve to increase the overall literacy level of the voting public as a whole since the cretins who still support him will doubtless not be able to pollute the polls with their votes if they don't know who's running and in doing so is at the same time preventing them from spraining their poor liberal brains with information that might cause them to have an independent thought in their head! ^_~